24-Year-Old Gets 3 Life Terms in Prison for Witnessing a Drug Deal: The Ugly Truth of Mandatory Drug Sentencing

24-Year-Old Gets 3 Life Terms in Prison for Witnessing a Drug Deal: The Ugly Truth of Mandatory Drug Sentencing [alternet.org]

This is a simple truth: the United States is the only country in the first world that imposes life sentences to teenagers for small-time, non-violent drug offenses. In fact, the American legal system does so with alarming regularity, spending $40 billion a year to lock up hundreds of thousands of low-level dealers. The practice began when Ronald Reagan declared a "War on Drugs" in 1986, and has spread steadily since then. The following year, Congress enacted its federal mandatory sentencing guidelines, which automatically buried tens of thousands of low-level, non-violent drug offenders in the belly of the beast for decades—even for multiple life terms. Just ask Clarence Aaron, inmate number 05070-003.

At the age of 24, Aaron was sentenced to three life terms for his role in a cocaine deal. That's effectively three times the sentence imposed upon Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010. Aaron was a student and football player at Southern University in Baton Rouge. He'd never been arrested. In 1992, he made the mistake of being present for the sale of nine kilograms of cocaine and the conversion of one kilo of coke to crack. Aaron would have earned $1,500 for introducing the buyer and seller. He never actually touched the drugs.

Though his role was minor, Aaron received the longest sentence of anyone involved in the conspiracy when he refused to cooperate with authorities.
...(cont'd)...

The war on drugs needs to end as does mandatory minimum sentencing.

A crime was committed and I'm not suggesting that they not be punished but 3 life terms? Murderers and terrorists don't usually get that much time. Can anyone really argue that this guy deserved 3 life sentences for introducing drug dealers to each other (not actually dealing himself)?

Witnessing?

He was a dealer.

The problem with this issue is that people try to combat it by appealing to emotions. But the general public will never feel THAT bad for a drug dealer, even if he got a raw deal. It needs to be put into dollars and cents. It's just not worth it to spend money keeping these non-violent offenders in jail for absurdly long sentences.

Here's an undated PBS interview with Clarence

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro...aaron.html

Back story:

PBS: Snitch [pbs.org]

Quote from vaultaddict : Witnessing? He was a dealer.

What's your definition of "dealing"? He didn't sell nor buy drugs. Did he "deal"?

Quote from highfloydelity : Here's an undated PBS interview with Clarence http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro...aaron.html

I'm too slow

Quote from paperboy05 : I'm too slow

So close ... I had just finished reading that when I posted.

I think the moral of the story is to cooperate with police. His "friends" did and placed everything on him, legitimately or not.

Fox News story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,29...47,00.html

Quote from highfloydelity : What's your definition of "dealing"? He didn't sell nor buy drugs. Did he "deal"?

He was to make money from a drug deal.

He was a dealer.

If you wanna call him a drug broker, I can compromise.

Quote from highfloydelity : What's your definition of "dealing"? He didn't sell nor buy drugs. Did he "deal"?

This is exactly how high level dealers get away with it. They hire low level nobody's to deliver the product and other nobody's to collect the money. The money and the product are never together or swapped for one another and the boss is never handling either during a deal. It's pretty short sighted to not call those people dealers.

Quote from vaultaddict : He was to make money from a drug deal. He was a dealer. If you wanna call him a drug broker, I can compromise.

Or drug liaison.

You can also blame the juries ( you know your peers ) as the enablers of all of this

It is suppose to be juries who stand as the final balance btw the gov't and its laws, if people are willing to end the drug war they must be willing to never convict people based on these drug statues. If the gov't can no longer win anymore drug case, guess what.... they will stop trying them.

Quote from paperboy05 : I think the moral of the story is to cooperate with police.

How would he have cooperated? He would've had to lie, like the others did. He didn't know anything, never saw any drugs, never dealt them directly. What was he going to give the police when they ask where the drugs came from?

The moral is that you should lie as much as possible to avoid jail time and don't expect the system to sort it out for you.

Quote from vaultaddict : He was to make money from a drug deal. He was a dealer. If you wanna call him a drug broker, I can compromise.

'Drug broker' is better, I suppose, but this wasn't his business. The other two were repeat dealers and offenders. This guy had no history, had never been arrested, and had no repeatable business.

Quote from shhaggy : This is exactly how high level dealers get away with it. They hire low level nobody's to deliver the product and other nobody's to collect the money. The money and the product are never together or swapped for one another and the boss is never handling either during a deal. It's pretty short sighted to not call those people dealers.

This wasn't an ongoing operation, though. He wasn't continually introducing people. He would not have to introduce them a second time. His part of the "business" was concluded.